Posts in Storytelling

Patrick Lanigan/Flickr We live in an age of skepticism and mistrust. Perhaps this is why marketers are constantly on a quest to find and capture “authenticity” — the 21st Century Holy Grail. Authenticity is one essential brand component that can distinguish a leader from a laggard. Consistent with the quest to establish authentic, meaningful, emotional…

Last Wednesday, I arrived at Washington and Lee University, in Lexington, Virginia, to offer a guest lecture for Professor Caleb Dance’s undergraduate course, “Improvisation and Performance Culture in the Ancient World.” The class examines improvisation’s fundamental role in the overlapping art forms of storytelling, public speaking, theater and music. Dr. Dance asked me to relate…

The History Factory team has been busy over the past several months pulling together a collection of some of the most powerful heritage stories we’ve helped clients uncover and tell over the past 37 years. The result is a new book, Start With the Future and Work Back, which will be released this week (available…

Welcome to the new and improved historyfactory.com. I’m delighted to share our new site for several reasons and I suspect that anyone who spends time reviewing it will agree why. First, this site is our most visually inspiring to date. It showcases the great work The History Factory team has produced for our clients over…

Six hours before American Pharoah ran away with the Triple Crown, I was lucky enough to meet William Nack, author of Secretariat: The Making of a Champion, a man who gambled his career on a biography of a horse and won. Nack sat on the “Biographies of Non-Persons” panel at the sixth annual Biographers International…

We talked about the shape of stories, discussed the raw materials of corporate narratives, and looked at how to develop different stories for different audiences. We discussed where Act I should begin and how to develop drama in Act II. And we dove into the details of how to create memorable scenes. Now, let’s bring…

Remember that interesting couple you met at the party, the ones from my last blog installment? Well, picture this: you come home from that same party and tell your wife that you’d like to invite them over for dinner sometime. “Okay, but which couple?” she replies. “We met a ton of people tonight, Charles.” “Joel…

Have you seen the McDonald’s “Signs” advertisement? I’d be surprised if you haven’t seen it, talked about it, or at least read about it. When I first saw it in January, I knew it was going to create a buzz. And it has. Ever since its debut during the NFC playoffs, and later that evening…

In recent years, I have presented the history of Chicago advertising and public relations as a guest lecturer for Ron Culp’s DePaul University class “Chicago Agencies: Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow.” While the students’ learning has been a focal point of my lectures, my own learning was piqued while preparing for my early January 2015 presentation,…

Picture this: You’re at a party and you meet an interesting couple—one of those opposites-attract duos. After a few drinks, you ask one of the all-time great storytelling prompts: “So, how did you two meet?” And they answer: “Oh, well, 10 years ago we saw each other on a street and we were both single…